Richard Garriott
Creator of Ultima, co-founder of Origin Systems
Games are the only medium where you can create a world and then let other people live in it. That's what I've always wanted to do - not tell stories about a world, but build a world that stories happen in.
Richard Garriott, Game Developers Conference
When I look back at the Ultima series, what I'm most proud of is the Virtue system. Not because it worked perfectly - it didn't always. But because we were asking the right question: what does it mean to be a good person, and how do you design a game around that?
Richard Garriott, post-Origin interview
Lord British always had to be rescued because I thought it was funny. But over time he became a symbol of something more serious - the idea that a ruler is only as good as the people who serve him. The Avatar isn't Lord British's servant. Lord British is the Avatar's responsibility.
Richard Garriott, Ultima retrospective panel
The Ultima fan community is the most passionate and intellectually engaged fan base I have ever encountered. They don't just play the games - they analyse them, debate them, build on them. That community is the real legacy of Britannia.
Richard Garriott, Ultima Online anniversary event
EA didn't understand what we were building. They saw a game engine and a world; we saw a philosophy and a community. Those two visions were incompatible, and the company paid the price.
Richard Garriott, speaking about Origin's acquisition
Warren Spector
Producer, Ultima VI and Ultima Underworld; creator of Deus Ex
The question I always ask about a game is: what are the verbs? What can the player do? The answer should always be: more than you'd expect. More ways to approach a problem, more tools to solve it, more consequences to your choices. That's the Ultima lesson.
Warren Spector, GDC talk on immersive sims
Working on Ultima Underworld changed my entire understanding of what a game could be. We weren't designing levels - we were designing a world and trusting the player to navigate it. That's a fundamentally different design philosophy, and I've never let go of it.
Warren Spector, Gamasutra retrospective
The Ultima games, particularly IV through VII, are the most sophisticated moral arguments ever made in an interactive medium. They don't preach - they create conditions in which you can't avoid thinking about what kind of person you want to be. That's extraordinary.
Warren Spector, Game Informer interview
I made Deus Ex because I wanted to make a game in the tradition of Ultima Underworld - a world you could approach any way you liked, with consequences that felt meaningful and systems that simulated rather than scripted. The lineage is direct.
Warren Spector, Deus Ex retrospective
Paul Neurath
Founder of Blue Sky Productions / Looking Glass Studios, creator of Ultima Underworld
We wanted to simulate a real dungeon - not a game dungeon. A real dungeon has physics. Things fall. Water flows. Creatures have territories and needs. Once you decide to simulate rather than script, everything changes.
Paul Neurath, Ultima Underworld retrospective
The Stygian Abyss is not a dungeon - it's a world that happens to be underground. There are factions, economies, light sources, ecosystems. Designing it required us to think about every system in relation to every other system. That's still the hardest kind of design there is.
Paul Neurath, Gamasutra postmortem
When I talk to young designers today, I tell them: play Ultima Underworld before you design anything. Not to copy it - to understand what systemic depth feels like from the inside, as a player.
Paul Neurath, speaking at a game design workshop